Category Archives: Home & Garden

So, Sunday there’s an open house. Anyone willing to guess how many people will show up? The weather is supposed to be partly cloudy with a high of 81. (The last time we had an open house, with our previous realtor, there was that freak April snowstorm). I’m going to say… 1 nosy neighbor and one actual househunter. And that, my friends, is going out on a limb.

In keeping with the non-stop-writing-about-the-house thing today. As it looks more and more probable that we’ll be staying in the Rhinebeck area, the more and more I’m getting these nesting tendancies (and NO I’m most certain NOT pregnant, the hell you say!). I love looking at catalogs and websites and found one for lovelyhome furniture that has free delivery. In addition to having a good selection of furniture (including baby furniture), I love that the site has a room planner. It’s really fun to play with and it gives you a good idea of how everything will (or won’t) fit in your room. Our living room has the fireplace in an odd corner so it can be difficult to place furniture. Maybe I’ll play around with this instead of whipping out the old graph paper.

I don’t often use my dishwasher. Generally I find it faster and easier to handwash everything. However, it had been a while since I ran the dishwasher and I was super tired so last night I figured I would put some dishes through. I turned it on before I went to bed and this is what I woke up to. In addition to sediments all over the dishes (which honestly didn’t surprise me much – we have a well and when we don’t run a tap for a while, sediment builds up – we will have to get a filter/water softener if we stay – but this was way worse), it was a weird red/burgundy color and it was REALLY sticking to the dishes. After running them through again, there was no improvement. I removed everything, washed it all by hand, and ran about a half-gallon of vinegar through the dishwasher which helped. And then as I was scrubbing, I saw it: a crayon wrapper. One of my lovely angels had put a red crayon in the dishwasher.

Do NOT try this at home.

Perhaps “woes” is being a bit dramatic, but the sliding glass door in our kitchen is a real problem. Noah loves to open it (and the tricky monkey knows how to unlock it), so I have to be very careful anytime I even think he’s running over there. Plus, honestly, it could be a bit more attractive. Right now we have vertical blinds which look fairly nice, but I’m wondering if there’s another way to dress it up. I’d love to replace the sliding glass doors with a set of French doors and maybe down the road we’ll do that. But in the meantime, maybe something to dress up the blinds? (What do you call that piece that goes along top a window… a cornice?) I probably shouldn’t obsess over something so trivial, but it’s a big part of the kitchen (obviously) and I just want the room to look nice.

Why do I hate that term so much — “curb appeal?” There’s something about it that just irritates me. Nevertheless, we have done a little bit in that area since we are, after all, still trying to tell this house. Continue reading Improving that “curb appeal”→

I haven’t talked much about the house lately, but I have had a couple people ask me, so… yes, we’re still trying to sell it. We recently signed on with a new realtor. This one is smack dab in the middle of Rhinebeck. Enough with the Poughkeepsie realtors — they are so clueless about the northern part of the county, yet think they know everything. We signed a six-month contract, so that gives us until the end of the year. If it doesn’t sell by December, well, we have alternate plans, but December is several months away, so we’ll just take it one day at a time. There are two showings tomorrow afternoon, but of course I am not getting my hopes up. Either way things go, I think we’ll be happy with what we’ve worked out. It’s just a crappy real estate market and our house happens to fall in a weird price range — it’s certainly not a “starter home” but it’s not at the top end of the scale, either. As usual, we fall into a kind of “no-man’s land!” So we’re just going with the flow. But yes, we’re still plugging away and so far are happy with the new realtor.

Why? Why can’t things just go swimmingly with this house sale? I’ve actually simmered down a lot about this since my discovery earlier this morning, but I’m still ticked off. I decided to do a quick Realtor*com search to see what other properties are for sale in our town, to compare. I noticed that there were two listings for our house, which I knew, but for some reason this time I noticed two different prices — the price we listed it at in June, and then the (reduced) price we listed it at in October when we renewed our contract. I left a message with our realtor to let her know.

Then, I looked at the MLS sheets I have (for the rare occasion when someone comes to look), and though they were printed out in December, the price is still the old price. So then I looked at a few different sites: Homeseekers*com, a couple local brokerages that have MLS searches, and guess what? Every time our house is listed at the old price. It is a $5,000 difference! I called her back and let her know this. This time I spoke with her and she was like, “Oh, those sites aren’t updated regularly.” I said I’d feel much better if she would check for me. She had another client on hold so she said she would and she’d call me back.

After thinking about it a bit, in the big picture it’s probably not a huge deal because around here, November/December are very slow months, and obviously we’re going to decrease the price now, if it wasn’t changed, so it might be good timing since the “spring” market is said to start in February. But that doesn’t excuse it. She was the one who pressed us to lower the price, so I just assumed she’d be diligent about making the changes in MLS (because obviously that’s something I can’t do!). I really don’t want to micromanage every single aspect surrounding our lives.